First-Ever Awarded Impact Initiative Grants

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Lafayette, Colorado (March 09, 2017) - Foothills United Way is proud to announce the region's first-ever Impact Initiative Grants awarded to three LIVE UNITED® Collaboratives: Dream Big Initiative, Mountain Human Services Collaborative, and DV/Child Protection Collaboration & Consultation Team. With $160,000 in impact initiative grant funding, Foothills United Way is the first and only funder to focus its grant making on encouraging and fostering collaboration.

These initiatives have earned Foothills United Way’s official recognition as LIVE UNITED® Collaboratives, which is awarded to partnerships that successfully work with each other to solve some of the community's most pressing issues. The Dream Big Initiative is a collaborative of nine partners to “increase Boulder’s collective commitment to eliminate the opportunity and achievement gaps” so that “by 2040, all children in Boulder County are succeeding academically and reaching their full potential.” Boulder County Housing & Human Services and Foothills United Way will collaborate to jointly fund the Mountain Human Services Collaborative, which provides critical services such as food assistance, housing and access to employment and health care for residents of mountain communities in western Boulder County. DV/CPS Collaboration & Consultation Team provides immediate support and resources to families impacted by violence, helping them achieve and sustain safety and stability, and will collect critical data to develop much needed resources for these vulnerable children and adults.

Foothills United Way’s President & CEO, Doug Yeiser, comments, “To get to the heart of our community’s greatest challenges, we have to work together. More than 700 nonprofits in our region have improved a lot of lives over the years, but coordinated work gets us to the root of problems - service providers acting in unison with the best strategies, and funders joining forces to concentrate enough resources to get the job done.”

With these types of grants, Foothills United Way seeks to promote collaborative work by investing in promising partnerships that have the capacity to achieve more impact than individual efforts. This emerging collaborative of three organizations works to provide families in need with strengths-based family support/family development services. Foothills United Way is committed to growing healthy partnerships and funding the kind of collaborative work that shows so much promise in advancing the success of our community’s residents.

“It has been exciting developing Foothills United Way’s new funding model with such a dedicated group of volunteers,” said Lesley Smith, Chair of Foothills United Way’s Community Impact Committee. “Innovation has come to life with the first Impact grants being awarded. We believe that by working together collaboratively on issues of concern to our community the sum will be greater than the parts. I’m confident that these collaborative projects will begin to move the needle on the childhood achievement gap, resilience and domestic violence.”

GRANT SUMMARIES

Boulder County Safer Families Initiative -The Boulder County Safer Families Initiative will build upon the foundation of collaboration, relationships and capacities nurtured by the DV/CPS Team over the past six years, to develop a more comprehensive and effective coordinated community response to the co-occurring issues of child abuse and domestic violence. This initiative will provide immediate support and resources to families impacted by violence, helping them achieve and sustain safety and stability, and will also collect critical data and develop much needed resources for these vulnerable children and adults.

Dream Big Initiative - The Dream Big Initiative’s goal is to “increase Boulder’s collective commitment to eliminate the opportunity and achievement gaps” so that “by 2040, all children in Boulder County are succeeding academically and reaching their full potential.” The Dream Big Initiative will break the cycle of poverty among Boulder County’s low-income families by providing academic and social support to youth and their parents; instead of recreating the wheel, the collaborative will be expanding on successful models and providing wrap-around support through multiple agencies and organizations to prevent duplication of services and improve effectiveness of funds.

LIVE UNITED® Collaborative: Dream Big Initiatives - Boulder County Housing and Human Services, Boulder Housing Partners, Boulder Valley School District, City of Boulder Family Resource Schools, City of Boulder Parks & Recreation Youth Services Initiative, Foothills United Way, "I Have a Dream" Foundation of Boulder County, The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County

Strengthening Mountain Communities From Within - The Strengthening Mountain Communities From Within initiative is a multi-faceted approach to provide more integrated and deeper direct basic needs services and referrals to other resources in support of vulnerable residents of the Boulder County mountain communities. This will include strengthening the MHSC and P2P backbone functions of coordination and collaboration, building on the existing successful Mountain Resource Liaison work by deepening outreach and expanding into new communities, providing funding directly to programs already meeting basic needs in mountain communities, and providing a framework for intra-community relationships between service providers to grow and strengthen.